Maker of SAT Aims New Test at 8th Graders

Officials at the New York City-based College Board last week rolled out their newest product: ReadiStep.

No, it’s not a new piece of exercise equipment or a whipped dessert topping—it’s a test for 8th graders that some critics are calling a pre-PSAT, referring to the Preliminary SAT assessment taken by 9th and 10th graders and owned by the College Board.

The test, which will be given for the first time next fall, to some extent resembles a slightly scaled-down PSAT. It will be given in students’ schools, and divided into three 40-minute, multiple-choice sections: critical reading, writing skills, and mathematics.

College Board officials said that the test will be paid for by schools at a cost of less than $10 per student, and that scores will be released to school districts, students, and parents within four weeks of its administration.

“ReadiStep was created at the request of schools and districts,” Lee Jones, the College Board’s senior vice president of college-readiness products, told reporters on a teleconference. “They wanted a measure of students’ progress toward college earlier than 10th grade.”

Mr. Jones declined to specify which or how many schools or districts had asked for the exam, which he said was “specifically built from a blueprint of ... college-readiness standards.”

The College Board says those standards, trademarked as “English Language Arts and Mathematics College Board Standards for College Success,” are designed to be national models of rigorous academic content. The standards are meant to align curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development with college-readiness and Advanced Placement standards, according to a statement from the nonprofit College Board, which also owns the AP assessments.

Move Attracts Criticism

Critics were dismissive of the College Board’s suggestion that ReadiStep fills a void.

“They’re selling the equivalent of Reddi Wip,” said Robert Schaeffer, a spokesman for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, a Cambridge, Mass.-based testing-watchdog group, referring to the whipped dessert topping. “There’s no need for another test, other than to boost the College Board’s revenues and market share.”

Mr. Schaeffer calculated that by the time students reach 8th grade, they will have taken at least 14 standardized tests mandated under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, in addition to others required by states and school districts.

In answer to a question about whether the College Board believes there is hypothetically a point at which students are tested too much, Mr. Jones said, “They need to have ongoing feedback.”

Iowa City, Iowa-based ACT Inc., which owns the ACT test, has offered Explore, an assessment for 8th and 9th graders, since 1991. A record 980,000 students last year took Explore, which costs schools $7.50 per student, said act spokesman Ed Colby.

W. James Popham, a professor emeritus and assessment expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he hadn’t yet seen ReadiStep, which has not been made available to reporters. But he brushed off the College Board’s assertion that ReadiStep will provide educators with an accurate diagnosis of a student’s academic skills and lack thereof.